Fact Checking?
Digby discovered an amazing thing – the New York Times actually looked and found that some of the groups complaining about being targeted by the IRS, were heavily involved in politics.
They also found out that the questionnaire with all of the ‘strange requests’ was developed from court decisions involving 501(c)(4) applications, and not a random fishing expedition.
I was personally gratified that the individual who was in charge of the process back in 2000 had the same low opinion of the IG’s report that I did. The IG seemed to think all he had to look at was what happened to tea party groups, rather than the entire process.
One thing we still don’t know is what the entire list of names to watch for looked like. It has been implied, but not confirmed that the listing wasn’t limited to tea party et al., but contained other keywords that aren’t associated with ‘conservative’ groups.
2 comments
good on digby and good on the nyt for writing about this. and thank you for the link – i haven’t been hanging out on the interwebz much lately, including most of my usual haunts (like digby and the nyt).
It’s nice that someone is asking questions about the supposed ‘scandals’.
One of the things that bugs me is that in the military the IG investigates everything. If you complain to the IG you know that you will be investigated also, so you had better be innocent before you start the process.
The IRS IG basically just said that it looked bad, but didn’t actually point out any wrong doing on the part of the employees.